Little Talks
by Ricechex
Summary: Sherlock and Joan share some moments together. BROTP feelings in this, and Irene Adler feels. Plus some Ty Morstan feels. Not sure how long this might be, as it's just stuff that pops into my head, so is being called complete for now.
1. To Have A Friend

She's tired. So tired she can barely see straight and she thinks,_ I could really use a drink_, and so she tells him, "I could really use a drink," which is stupid because she's his sober companion and he's an addict barely out of rehab, and she shouldn't be saying things like that. He leans in close and whispers conspiratorially, "To tell you the truth, Ms. Watson, so could I," and then she's laughing like this is the funniest thing she's ever heard, and he's laughing like he's _happy _for once, and she doesn't know why but she leans in and presses the tip of her finger to the tip of his nose, and she's laughing all over again.

And she thinks, _This is what I miss most about Ty_. Because it's not the sex, and it's not the dinners together or the opera or Mets games with a hot dog and a cold beer on a week night - no, what she misses is having a _friend_, because she doesn't have _friends_, she has clients and former co-workers and an ex she still loves more than she can possibly stand, and she has Sherlock-sodding-Holmes, who'd applaud her correct use of the word he taught her just the other day, and who would tell her he understood.

_"It has its costs." _She stares at him and wonders how many pieces there are to the puzzle of him.

She wants to ask him, wants to pin him down and make him tell her, but that would be admitting defeat, or cheating, and she wants to win this fair and square, because this is a game, it's always been a game between them. She wants to say,_ Are you alone?_ But instead she asks, "Are you lonely?" and he just looks at her and licks his lips and says, "Sometimes," and she nods because she knows what he means, she knows what it's like to be lonely _and _alone, and she thinks about Ty again and wonders what he's doing right then.

"You should call him, Watson."

She looks at him as they lay on the floor together, not touching but close to it, and she wants to do just as he says, wants to jump up and leave the cold case with it's pictures on the wall and the ceiling (she isn't sure how he managed those ones, and she doesn't want to know, because it's the mystery of the thing that makes it so much fun) and she wants to grab her phone, Speed Dial One, because Ty's always been One and he'll never be anything else and no one else will ever be One.

Instead, she looks back at the ceiling and asks, "It happened in London, didn't it? Irene. Her death," and he looks at the ceiling and says, "You weren't supposed to mention it again, we had an agreement," and she sighs and asks, "Can we pretend we're drunk, since we can't really be," and he says, "What would that help?"

It wouldn't help anything. Being drunk wouldn't help, either. But she says, "I get really talkative when I'm drunk. I ask questions I shouldn't. And then I feel badly about them," and he says, "Do you feel bad now, for asking that question?" and she answers him honestly, "No. I'm curious."

He laughs then, soft and sad and not at all like their earlier laughter, and she misses that already, which is a bit premature she thinks, but it's no less true.

"I miss him."

He looks over at her then, and she keeps staring at the ceiling and pretends she isn't crying, because if she can't pretend she's drunk then she can pretend she's still holding it together.

"Tell me about him, then."

And she does. She tells him about Sunday mornings when she didn't have a shift at the hospital, where they'd stay in their pyjamas all day. Ty would walk to the deli on the corner and get fresh bagels, cream cheese, and the best coffee you'd ever dream of. He always paid with a twenty, and left the remaining nine dollars in the tip jar - because Ty was caring and so magnanimous she wondered how he ever had money to pay his rent or keep his car running. It was one of the best things about him.

She tells him about coming home from an overnight shift at five-fucking-a.m. to see Ty flipping pancakes in the kitchen, the paper opened and folded to the international news section for her, a tall smoothie sitting next to a plate. She'd kiss Ty, kiss him so hard he'd almost burn the breakfast. They'd laugh and talk and eat and shower, and she'd crawl into the still warm bed and he'd kiss her forehead. The door would close and she'd fall asleep, and she'd wake up to the sound of it opening again.

She tells him about date nights that ended in arguments, and arguments that ended in sex. She tells him about stupid phone conversations and meaningless chit chat, and she tells him about the ring she found the last morning they were together.

"You ran away then, because you were scared."

She frowns, and says, "I wasn't scared," and he says, "No other reason for you to have run from it, then, is there," and she swallows and says, "Fine, I was scared, marriage scares me."

"Because of your parents. Your father had an affair, you're afraid it would have happened to you two. And you're not entirely certain which of your parents is to blame for their own affair-" and she rolls over quickly, props herself up, and almost growls at him, "My dad was with someone else. It's _his _fault."

And Sherlock looks at her and says, "But you wonder if your mother pushed him away. If he had the affair because she was uninterested in him," and Joan opens her mouth, closes it again, and lays back down. She looks at the ceiling and says, "Sometimes I hate how good you are at this," and he says, "Sometimes, so do I."

She smiles, and reaches out, finds his hand. He turns it over, and laces their fingers together.

"We're a good team, Watson."

"Yeah." She looks back at him and smiles and says, "For what it's worth..." and he smiles too and says, "Yes, you're my best friend too," and then he squeezes her hand once and lets go, and they lay on the floor and look at the ceiling.

"I'll call him tomorrow."

"Good. Now, I need to focus."

She closes her eyes and listens to him as he goes over the details of the case.

It felt good to have a friend again.


	2. Honesty Between Friends

He's thought about honesty. Thought about it and found it useful at times and downright worthless at others and now, as he sits on the floor in front of the sofa, he wonders if he should be honest with Watson. Not that he's been particularly dishonest about anything - omissions aren't _lies_, really, especially when the subject wasn't any of her business to begin with - but lately he's been feeling the weight of this truth, like a car slowly pressing down on him, an inch at a time, and just when he thinks he'd adjusted and can breathe, it lowers again.

"It was my fault."

Behind him, he feels Watson stirring, can imagine the way her head slowly rises out of the book she's been reading for the past three days, the one she's been looking forward to. He can see the way her brain would snap to, disconnect from the book and focus on what he's saying, because Watson is his friend, even when he doesn't deserve one, and especially when he doesn't deserve a friend as unfailing as former-Doctor Joan Watson. He swallows and waits, staring at the wood panelling his legs are sprawled over.

"What was your fault?"

Her voice is soft and concerned and _she knows _what he's talking about, of course she bloody well knows that he's about to talk about Irene, but damn her to the very depths of hell, she's going to make him say it, isn't she? He swallows again and licks his lips and says, "Irene, her death - it was my fault," and Watson is quiet for a moment before she says, "You didn't kill her, Sherlock," and he just says, "I as good as, really," and he lifts his hands from his thighs and picks at his fingernails absently.

Watson asks, "If she were here, would she blame you?" and he says, "No, and that's the hardest part of it, isn't it? Knowing she would forgive me," and Watson places a hand on his shoulder and squeezes once, with just enough pressure that he closes his eyes and thinks,_ Amygdala, amygdala, amygdala, _because now she's not just listening, she's interacting and it's more than he can stand, really, and the pressure is better and worse all at once and a moment later he lets out a long breath and feels like maybe this wasn't such a horrible idea.

He says, "I don't know why I feel like I should tell you any of this," and she says, "She loved you a great deal, didn't she?" and he laughs, because none of this is funny but he can't think of anything else to do but laugh. So she asks, "How do you feel, when you think about her?" and he answers immediately, "Alone," and he feels Watson shift her position, move so that she can stand up, and then she's sitting in front of him, book left on the sofa and she's watching him.

"Me too," she says, and he nods and says, "But you can fix that, we both know you can. You were supposed to call him today," and she shrugs and says, "I'm still scared," and he says, "So am I."

She looks at him like she's sad, and he doesn't want her to be sad because she's the only friend he has, really - even Allistair isn't someone he would talk about this with, and he hopes she knows, he _hopes _Watson understands what this means, that he's talking with her about the single most painful experience of his life.

She reaches out and takes his hands and says, "You know that I'm here for you, right?" and he nods because he doesn't know what to say, and that's rare, and she continues, "You really can talk about anything at all, anything you need to talk about," and he bites his lower lip and says, "I loved her. Very much. So much, Watson, that I cannot accurately describe how much she meant to me," and Watson scoots closer and keeps holding his hands and asks, "What's your favourite memory of her?"

He thinks about it, because there are so few that he really has, at this point, and sometimes he can't remember if he made one up or if it really happened and that angers him, that his mind was tainted so by anything, especially something he voluntarily put into his system, and after he's thought about he tells her, "We took in a play, once. It was rubbish - the actors were horrible, half of them seemed to miss their cues, the other half forgot lines, and the director seemed to not notice much of any of it. We left during intermission, ordered takeaway, and sat in a park, huddled together and feeding each other with our chopsticks, laughing at what a horrible experience that had been." He smiles sadly and blinks once, twice, then lets his eyes focus on Watson. "We were almost completely broke, and there wasn't enough money for a cab - so we walked nearly a mile back to my flat, because it was the closest," and she smiles at him and says, "Sometimes, the nights when you have no money are the best times you spend together."

He closes his eyes and says, "She died, because I loved her," and Watson asks, "Did someone kill her because they were jealous?" and he shakes his head and tells her, "No, they killed her because I wouldn't back down on an investigation," and he hears Watson's sudden soft gasp and feels her fingers tighten against his and he keeps his eyes closed because he doesn't want to see the look in her eyes. "We were threatened, and I was going to... but she told me I couldn't, told me I had to see it through, and they-" He swallows against the golf ball that seems to have embedded itself in his throat. "-they went after her. It was horrible and gruesome and..." He shudders and feels the tears, hot and unwelcome against his cheeks, and he shudders again and feels Watson's cool, soft fingers wiping them away. Her voice is quiet when she asks, "Did you catch them? Solve the case?" and he nods because he can't trust himself to speak and he lets himself be pulled into a hug, because friends do that, they hug each other when one or both are upset, and he clings to Watson and leaves a wet spot on her shoulder that he apologises for and she continually tells him isn't important.

When he pulls away first, she lets him go, and she doesn't stop him when he stands up and goes into the kitchen. He returns a few minutes later with several napkins, and two bottles of water, and he sits down and she moves next to him, their backs against the worn old sofa, and he thinks that perhaps, honesty between friends is a worthwhile pursuit


End file.
